


Some Will Seek Forgiveness

by burymeinziam



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 22:56:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burymeinziam/pseuds/burymeinziam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or that one fic where zayn and liam die but they come back to life and niall and harry and louis have some issues to work out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Will Seek Forgiveness

Zayn opens his eyes and is met with silence.

It’s a tiny room; the stereotypical kind with no windows and no doors. The ones people talk about when referring to mental institutions and the clinically insane.

There’s a bed and a toilet and a sink, but no mirror.

Zayn stands in front of the faucet and tries to remember his own face but he can only get as far as the color of his eyes. Maybe the shape of his nose if he tries hard enough.

“Brown?” He says out loud, thinking, wondering because it’s been so long and now he’s not so sure of himself.

“Brown.” The word sounds final, spoken in a voice Zayn hardly recognizes as his own but can belong to no one else.

_Brown._

But then he remembers that’s not him, but Liam.

There are no windows and no doors so that really only leaves him with nothing but his imagination.

Zayn closes his eyes and sees pitch black, then brown eyes and a pool of blood that Zayn knows isn’t his own.

The thing is when Zayn closes his eyes he dreams and usually that would be nice – something to counter the bitter loneliness that comes with the quiet – but when Zayn dreams he sees faces, hears the ear shattering screams and pleas for help.

When Zayn dreams he’s staring down the barrel of a gun and then suddenly he isn’t anymore.

There was so much blood.

“Brown.”

And Zayn knows they’re not his, but they’re Liam’s.

It’s not that Zayn doesn’t remember because he does. It’s one of those things a person can’t forget no matter how hard he tries. It’s one of those things that haunt you, leers from around every corner; mocking you.

Zayn sees it painted across the whites of the walls like one of the pieces he’d done before; the ones Liam insisted on hanging in the living room even though Zayn felt displaying his own artwork was pretentious and cocky.

(“ _You’re brilliant, Zayn,” Liam would tell him, wrapping an arm around Zayn’s shoulders before kissing the side of his hair. “And everyone should know it; not just me.”_

_And Zayn would smile and sigh, relaxing into Liam’s side. There was no point in arguing because Zayn would never win._

_He’d just look at Liam and know that this was all the affirmation he needed. Liam’s confidence in him was all that mattered.)_

It’s kind of hard to forget when you’re locked up in a room with no windows and no doors; no mirror to remind you of who you are and where you’ve come from. It’s hard to forget when you have nothing but the company of your own thoughts and the ugly memory of a night you’d do anything to forget.

“Brown.”

And Zayn knows they’re not his but Liam’s.

There’s a barrel of a gun and Zayn is looking down it. He can already feel the heat and the smoke even though it hasn’t been fired and the spit from the man’s mouth when he hisses the word “ _faggot_ ” burns when it hits his cheek.

Zayn is still standing in front of the sink, staring at himself in a mirror that was never there.

“Brown.”

And Zayn knows they’re not his but Liam’s.

He knows this is Hell even though the walls are white they’re tainted by the events leading to Zayn’s untimely death. Zayn knows this is Hell because even though there are no flames or demons or a little red man with a pitchfork and a pointed tail, he can feel the heat beneath his skin, feel the flesh burning and flaking from his limbs with each passing second.

It’s all in the mind, torture. It’s not the fire that burns, but the eyes.

“Brown.”

And Zayn knows they’re not his, but Liam’s.

They’re looking back at him, boring holes into his skin and Zayn knows it’s not on purpose but he hates him anyways. He’s lying on the ground, blood spilling over his lips as he coughs and his shirt is red, so very red, even though it had been white only seconds earlier.

And Liam is looking at Zayn like his misses him already and his eyes are burning and it hurts but Zayn knows he doesn’t mean it that way.

( _“God, Liam, you’re so fucking stupid you know that?” Zayn says, voice thick as he pulls Liam close. His phone is lying somewhere to his left since he’d tossed it after calling an ambulance. He can feel the blood soaking into his clothes._

_“I wasn’t thinking,” Liam answers quietly. Zayn looks down and Liam’s eyes are closing like he’s tired. If things were different, if they weren’t leaning up against a dirty wall in an alley at damn near two in the morning, Zayn would think Liam was only curling up for an afternoon nap on the couch._

_“You were trying to be a hero,” Zayn says solemnly. His throat feels thick, like it’s locking up, because he knows it. He can feel it in his bones that it’s pretty much over but he doesn’t want to cry._

_Liam looks up at him, eyes shining and they burn so fucking badly but Zayn doesn’t blame him. “Your hero.”_

_Zayn chokes on a sob, tries to pass it off as a laugh as he pulls Liam closer. “God, Liam,” he tells him. “You’re so fucking stupid.”_

_A few moments later Liam’s eyes are closed. Zayn tells himself he’s only napping)_  

“Brown.” His voice is choked off and broken and Zayn hardly recognizes himself anymore. “Brown.”

And Zayn knows they’re not his, but Liam’s.

Hell is a room with no windows and no doors. The walls are plain white but there’s also blood and it drips and it drops and it seeps into Zayn’s clothes.

There’s a bed and a toilet and a sink, but no mirror.

Zayn looks into it anyways, but it’s been years since anyone has bothered with looking back.

Hell is a room with no windows and no doors. The walls are plain white but there’s also blood painted across them like artwork painted by the most pretentious man in the world.

There’s a bed and a toilet and a sink but no mirror.

Hell is a prison where Zayn’s cellmate is compiled of memories he’d do anything to forget.

There is a bed and a toilet and a sink but no mirror and Zayn can’t recall the color of his own eyes.

“Brown.”

But Zayn knows they’re not his but Liam’s.

+

Zayn isn’t there, but Liam can feel him.

It looks like home, but it isn’t because certain parts of it are missing. Things like the miscellaneous cans of spray paint that Zayn would leaving lying around whenever he was working on a project.

Or the socks lying around that Zayn was too lazy to pick up after they’d fallen out of the laundry basket.

The apartment looks like his but it doesn’t look like theirs and that’s sort of what bothers Liam the most.

It’s the almost of it all; the way everything is so close and yet so far away. Liam lies in bed and he can feel Zayn lying next to him even though the right side of the bed is completely empty. He can hear Zayn snoring softly and snuffling in his sleep as he rolls over in bed, draping an arm over Liam’s chest in a sleepy attempt to get that much closer.

Liam closes his eyes and sees Zayn in that moment just before everything went black and then clear and he can hear the dry humor in Zayn’s voice.

 ( _“God, Liam, you’re so fucking stupid.”_ )

It seemed like a good idea at the time, stepping in and feeling the sharp pain of a bullet piercing his skin. Liam didn’t really register the blood seeping through and staining his shirt or how dizzy he felt a few moments afterwards. He never really noticed the man looking down at the gun in his hands before racing out of the alley and down the street.

He didn’t really notice any of that. Just the way Zayn was shaking as he held him; the way Zayn’s voice wavered as he tried to maintain that aura of calm, cool and collected.

( _“God, Liam, you’re so fucking stupid.”_

_And Liam knew he meant “I love you.”)_

Zayn isn’t there, but Liam can feel him and that’s sort of what tells him that this is supposed to be heaven.

It’s the painting on the living room wall; something quick of a dog they’d seen at the park the other day that Zayn had done out of boredom and Liam had insisted on hanging it up in the living room above the couch even though Zayn had said it was stupid and not worth showing off.

And the thing is, Zayn had been right. It wasn’t anything particularly spectacular or brilliant. There were a number of pieces Zayn that Zayn had scattered around the tiny guest bedroom turned studio down the hall that were way better than the dog Liam had insisted on hanging up over the couch.

It’s just that this one reminded Liam of Zayn because it was subtle and simple and it wasn’t even trying at all. It was all the parts of Zayn that only Liam really got to know.

And he loved it.

And he misses him so much because Zayn isn’t there but Liam can feel him everywhere he goes and that’s sort of what makes him think this must be heaven.

And it’s also how he knows that Zayn isn’t coming.

The apartment is exactly how they’d left it aside from the socks and the cans of spray paint and Zayn’s underwear lying forgotten at the end of the bed.

Everything is the same and it’s comforting but it also isn’t.

Liam knows in his heart that this is heaven but he passes by the bathroom and, even though he was never there, he can see it happening clear as day.

There’s no broken glass on the floor, but Liam can see where Zayn had dropped the bottle over the ledge of the bathtub just before he’d drifted off to sleep.

The pills aren’t there, but Liam can see the few that were left over lying on the counter next to the sink.

He wasn’t there but Liam can smell the liquor on Zayn’s breath, taste the whiskey on his lips and it’s bitter and harsh and Liam wishes it had never happened.

Heaven is all the places he’d ever been, the people he’d loved, anything that ever made him smile. Liam has his apartment with Zayn, his grandparents, and that stupid dog his parents had gotten him when he was ten; the one that got hit by the car during his sophomore year in high school. It’s everything good in life, all the things that had ever made Liam want to wake up in the morning back when he was breathing.

Liam knows that this is heaven. He can feel it in his gut.

The only problem is that the apartment is his but not theirs and when he passes by the bathroom he can see the mess of Zayn’s hair, his arm hanging damp and limp over the edge of the tub.

Liam knows in his heart that this is Heaven, but he also knows it’s not.

+

Sometimes Liam dreams of a boy with bright hazel eyes and messy dark hair that can never be bothered by anything other than paint stained fingers. He dreams of an apartment in the city and mornings spent burning pancakes on the stove because neither of them ever learned their way around the kitchen.

Sometimes Liam wakes up at four am with a dull ache in his chest that he can’t quite place and the memory of an apartment in the sky that never really belonged to him. He thinks of a blonde with sad blue eyes and an orb swirling with blues and purples.

Sometimes Liam dreams of a room with no windows and no doors and a boy staring into a mirror that was never there. There’s the barrel of a gun and so much blood and Liam was a hero.

Sometimes Liam wakes up to the blaring of his alarm feeling tethered, like he’s being pulled but he isn’t sure where. It’s just pulling him down, down, down and Liam can never remember what he’d seen behind closed lids.

+

“You’ll never see past the clouds.”

Liam looks up from where he’d been staring down and is faced with a blonde around his age with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his tan khakis.

“What?”

“The clouds; they block out pretty much everything. You’ll never see past them.”

Liam frowns, trains his eyes downward once more and sighs because he’s been looking for hours and hasn’t seen anything other than white fluff.

“You’re sure?”

The blonde nods, kneels down beside Liam. “They do it on purpose.”

Liam wants to ask why but he isn’t sure he wants to know the reason. He also doesn’t want to risk provoking the curiosity of why he’s been staring into clouds for the past three hours.

“You miss it don’t you?”

Liam shrugs.

“Them?”

Liam turns to the boy next to him, furrows his brow. “Who?”

“Whoever you’re looking for.”

And Liam wonders how he could have known “I…”

“It’s not a crime,” the boy says with a laugh, settling down, crossing his legs as he sits. “It never feels right when you’re up here and they’re down there.”

There’s a short silence and then quiet laughter before the boy is offering a hand and a friendly smile.

“Niall,” he says. “Horan.”

Liam stares at the hand, looks at it for a moment as if he isn’t sure of what to do with it. Then it hits him and Liam can feel his face heating up.

“Oh,” he replies, takes Niall’s hand as he stares sheepishly at the ground. “I’m Liam.”

Niall’s hand is warm unlike everything else in heaven that has felt somewhat cold and distant. He smiles at Liam and it feels genuine, like he knows that, more than anything, what Liam needs the most is a friend.

“Below the clouds,” Niall says, letting go of Liam’s hands and nodding down toward where Liam had been staring earlier. “Think of it like dust… or ash.”

Liam frowns. “Ash?”

“When you die, it’s kind of like being reborn,” Niall explains. “Like a phoenix. You pass on and everything around you burns and then you’re reborn in Heaven and… the rest of your life, all the stuff you left behind, is the ash, you know? You rise from it.” Niall pauses, laughs something that Liam observes as being soft and sad. “Literally.”

Liam looks back down at the clouds, thinks about Zayn breaking down and crumbling into a pile of ash soon after Liam had taken his last breath; thinks back to his apartment and the bathroom he hates passing by because…

( _Zayn’s whiskey coated lips and his arm lying limp over the edge of the tub, pills on the bathroom sink and an empty bottle on the floor and—_

_“God, Liam you’re so fucking stupid.”_

_And Liam knew he meant “I love you.”_ )

“What if you don’t?”

Liam doesn’t know why he’s asking because it isn’t like he doesn’t already know. He’s known all along; he just doesn’t want to admit it. Liam doesn’t want to know about horns and fire and the possibility of Zayn’s flesh melting from his bones for the rest of eternity.

“Don’t what?”

“Rise,” Liam says softly, before turning to look at Niall, his eyes scared and a little apprehensive about the answer he knows he’s going to receive. “What if you fall instead?”

It’s the expression on Niall’s face, the way he chews on his bottom lip that confirms Liam’s fears. He nods, pulls his knees tight against his chest and rests his chin against the hold forming in his jeans. There’s a hand on his shoulder, something slightly foreign that causes Liam to tense up a bit, but it’s warm and comforting all the same and Liam is sort of glad that Niall is there.

He looks down into the clouds, tries to see past the fluff and pictures everything he’d ever loved and touched bursting into flames; everything charred beyond recognition. Liam pictures Zayn in a bathtub holding a bottle of booze, drunk off booze and pills; falling asleep with a hand hanging over the ledge.

“Suicide is a sin, you know,” Liam says quietly. “One of the mortal ones… you can’t come back from that.”

Liam thinks of Zayn’s final moments. His eyes slipping shut, feeling drunk and peaceful; like he can finally forget. He feels the slowing of his heartbeat, the last breath to leave his lungs before everything stops.

And then Zayn is falling, falling, falling.

“Ash.” Liam wipes the tears forming in the ducts of his eyes and he thinks, sadly, that it couldn’t be more fitting.

+

Most of the time when Zayn wakes up it’s light out and he’s greeted with the sounds of the city waking up. There’s the tired chatter or people on their cell phones walking to work and cars cruising down the roads, stopping at red lights and speeding up when they flash green.

He thinks it’s beautiful really, seeing the colors in the sky and the light fogginess brought on by the clouds and the way it seems as though the sun is only just waking up as it peeks in through the cracks and crevices of the trees.  

Zayn almost forgets how chilly it is, lying on a bench in a park a few blocks down from his old apartment building where his car is still parked in the visitor’s lot wearing nothing but a thin Henley and a pair of faded jeans he’s owned since high school. He forgets, but only momentarily until a particularly strong gust of wind rushes through him, ruffling his hair and making him shiver.

It’s times like these when Zayn starts feeling bitter. He wants to hate the world for casting him aside and leaving him with nothing but the clothes on his back and a little less than a hundred dollars in his pocket. He wants to hate the world and everyone in it because, in all honesty, Zayn can’t think of a single thing he’s done to deserve a life so low.

Or maybe he can, but it really isn’t his fault.

Not really.

But then again, it kind of is.

“Fucking hell,” he mumbles under his breath, wrapping his arms around himself. Suddenly the world isn’t so beautiful anymore. The people chatting on their phones are a mere annoyance as they pass by and the cars are only loud and distracting and their incessant horn honking make Zayn’s ears ring. The sun peeking through the trees is a bit too bright and during the moments when Zayn is feeling particularly irritated, he thinks the brightness could be giving him a headache.

Zayn sighs heavily, wonders when and how this all happened; remembers a time when smiling had been easy and never felt like such a chore. Zayn remembers getting out of classes on Friday afternoons and hitting up the pub by seven, drinking with his friends and maybe bringing a guy home when it was all over. He remembers getting high in his living room and slapping paint onto a canvas and calling it art. Zayn closes his eyes and recalls drawings of a boy he’d never met with big brown eyes and thinking of what a pleasure it would be to see his face.

Zayn still sees him sometimes, when it’s dark out and the air isn’t chilling him to the bone. Zayn closes his eyes, chasing sleep, and he sees that face and it suddenly feels like summer; like he’s safe and warm in an apartment filled with his things and also theirs and it feels like home.

And it’s this that keeps Zayn going: the memory, or the fantasy ( _but, God, does it feel real_ ) and the knowledge that it really could be.

The feeling that it was.

+

God isn’t an entity so much as he is a man, Niall tells him.

“His name is Louis.”

“Louis?” Liam asks. “That’s so simple.”

Niall laughs. “I guess. People always get here assuming God is almighty and powerful and omnipotent and, I guess he is, but he’s also just a man. God changes just as Lucifer does just as the world does.”

“Changes?”

Niall turns back to look at Liam who is trailing behind him as they walk, taking in the parts of Heaven he has yet to venture into. “Yeah. He changes. Every few thousand years, I guess. I’ve only ever seen Louis, obviously, but I guess you could compare it to the way America goes through presidents only without the voting? Louis steps down and appoints someone new and then they rule heaven before appointing someone new and so on and so forth.” He pauses, watches for a moment as Liam’s eyes wander the scene around them taking in all the angels with their blindingly white wings. “I don’t mean to rush you, but we’re kind of on a schedule. You can drool over the angels later.”

Liam’s eyes snap in Niall’s direction as his cheeks fill with color. “Sorry…” He says, quickening his pace. “But what about Hell? Is that the same way?”

The color momentarily drains from Niall’s face and his voice, despite his attempts to sound normal, betrays him when he speaks. “No,” he answers. “Well sort of. God appoints Lucifer too. Or I suppose whoever is playing God at the time.”

Niall stops in front of a large building that reminds Liam of something out of ancient Rome. Liam stops beside him, taking in the piece of architecture. “How does he choose?” Liam asks. “God, I mean. When he picks someone new to take over Hell.”

Niall frowns. Liam can see the way his body tense, the sadness in his eyes when he looks up to the angels scattered out across the sky. “Them,” Niall says, gesturing up and around. “The angels.”

“The angels?”

Niall nods, takes Liam’s hand as he pulls him up the stairs of the building. “Every few thousand years?” He says, briefly glancing back at Liam and he sees a flash of bitterness and spite. “One of them is bound to fall.”

+

Hell isn’t hot or warm or muggy, but it’s cold and distant and lonely.

Sometimes Harry thinks it’s freezing, feels the chill in his bones and wonders how long it would take for his heart to turn to ice and shatter in his chest. It’s been so long that sometimes Harry feels numb; void of all feeling like he couldn’t even smile if he tried, never know the warmth of another human being even if they were to wrap him up into their arms and squeeze until all of the breath left Harry’s lungs.

Cold will do that to you, Harry thinks. It turns you into something so frustratingly contradictory; something hard and yet so fragile that even the slightest bit of pressure could make you shatter leaving behind the mush and the slush and the feeling that had once made you something resembling human.

All the things that made you up; the things that made you in The Image of God.

And Harry laughs.

He laughs because it’s ironic, really, the way he feels so cold and yet he can remember the faint traces of warmth he’d felt whenever Niall touched him. The way he feels so heartless and yet Harry can remember what it was like to love a boy beyond his duty and devotion to God.

Harry laughs because Hell is supposed to be a place void of sentiment and human emotion and yet he still knows the sting of betrayal and love and what it means to lose everything; to be cast out from the place he’d so long referred to as home.

And this, Harry thinks as a chill runs through his spine, makes him shiver, is torture.

+

It’s an orb.

A single orb sitting upon a pedestal at the center of an otherwise empty room.

“It sees everything,” Niall explains, running his fingers over the glass. Wisps of light purple and blue smoke swirl around inside. “You place your hands on it, close your eyes, and feel whoever you’re trying to see.”

Liam isn’t sure how this is supposed to work. With the way things have been going and the parts of heaven Liam has seen, it seems as though God (or Louis, Liam supposes) does everything he can to keep what happens in heaven and everything on earth separate.

“We’re not supposed to,” Niall says with a sly smile when he notes Liam’s confused expression. “Technically, only ‘authorized personnel’ are supposed to use this but…” he looks around, checking his surroundings before continuing. “I figure sneaking in and checking up on people every now and then doesn’t hurt. As long as nobody notices.”

“What happens if they do?” Liam asks, eyeing the orb, becoming transfixed with the swirling colors. He wonders what Zayn would look like in there; if he’d be just as pretty behind glass as he had been in person. If Liam would feel just as warm and loved through glass as he had when Zayn had actually been able to touch him.

He likes to think that he would, but right now since everything is so far away, Liam can’t be too sure.

Niall shrugs his shoulders. “I’m not… I don’t know, to be honest. I’ve never had to find out.”

Liam takes a quick survey of the area before tentatively stepping forward and placing a hand on the orb. It’s hot and the smoke swirls even faster under both of their hands. He looks up at Niall before drawing in a deep breath and speaking on the exhale.

“Well, let’s hope we never do, yeah?”

+

Zayn’s sitting, leaning back against the pale white of the walls when he hears it.

At first he thinks he’s going crazy, hearing voices, seeing faces that aren’t there and it wouldn’t surprise him because it’s only bound to happen; it’s a simple matter of time.

He tries hard not to think too much because the thinking leads to doing which leads to him standing in front of a mirror he knows isn’t really there and looking into eyes he knows he’ll never see again.

But Zayn can hear his voice, fell it ringing in his ears and its like poetry; like lines recited from that book he’d kept from the literature class he’d taken back in college.

“ _Zayn?_ ”

It’s a question. One Zayn wants to speak up and answer, but he’s afraid because if it isn’t real Zayn doesn’t know what he would do.

But what if it is?

Zayn had never believed in a Heaven or a Hell and yet here he was trapped, confined by these walls with nothing to entertain him but this perpetual state of loneliness.

And if Heaven and Hell are real why can’t this be too? Why can’t this be real as well?

Because this is Hell, Zayn thinks just when he’s about to cave and answer to the quiet call of his name.

_“Zayn?”_

Good things don’t happen here.

So Zayn ignores it.

Even as the voice grows more desperate, insistent, searching for any sort of a response. It breaks him to hear Liam calling, like he’s begging to be saved.

But Zayn knows that Liam is safe, that he’s somewhere better off, because if Zayn is in Hell then Liam must be in Heaven.

“You were so good,” Zayn says, almost doesn’t recognize the sound of his own voice.

( _“Please.”_ )

And Zayn figures if this is Hell then Liam must be in Heaven and his voice must be as real as his eyes and it’s all in Zayn’s head.

( _Brown,_                                                  

 _and Zayn knows they’re not his but Liam’s._ )

He closes his eyes, blocks it all out and retreats to the confines of his own mind; a place beyond white walls where he tries to keep things clear and quiet because sometimes everything gets so loud.

But Zayn just sees brown eyes, hears a voice, so familiar, calling his name

( _“Zayn.”_ )

and, suddenly, Zayn feels cold.

+

Niall finds Liam lying face down on the couch, body rising and falling every time he emits a heavy sigh of defeat.

“Nothing?” he asks, crossing the room and pushing Liam’s legs aside so he can sit down.

Liam sits up, drags a hand over his face as he shakes his head. “I tried all night. I called and I called – I swear I could almost see him – but he wouldn’t answer.”

“Harry used to do that,” Niall replies with a sad smile, looking down at his hands in his lap. Liam can see his cheeks heat up at the memory. “I’d call his name over and over again but he would just sit there, staring off into space like he was trying to ignore me; like it was too hard to hear my voice.”

Liam mulls over Niall’s words and he wants to cry thinking about how lonely Zayn must be; how alone he must be feeling. “Do you think that’s it then? Do you think that’s why?”

Niall shrugs his shoulders. “Maybe,” he answers. “Hell is a strange place. On the rare occasions I could actually see Harry he was always alone, sitting in this room by himself looking off into nothing. When he came around and actually talked back he told me that he used to think he was going crazy, that I wasn’t really there even though everything had felt so real.” Niall pauses and Liam can see the pain behind his eyes. He wonders what happened to Niall, knows that it’s in some way tragic, and thinks that whatever it was it never should have happened in the first place.

“It eats away at you, I think. Hell strips you of everything you used to be and leaves you empty. After a while, Harry just stopped talking altogether. I remember he told me once that it was so hard to have me there without being able to touch or see or feel me with him and I just… it feels so _bad,_ Liam,  but it’s all that you have and – I don’t know.

It might be different for everybody in the same way Heaven is. I mean, you have this: your apartment and your family… when I first got here there wasn’t much of anything because all I’d ever had was Harry until he was cast down…”

Liam isn’t sure what Niall means by “cast down” or what point he was trying to make, but he sort of understands that this is something bigger than finding a way to say hello. It’s sort of about finding Zayn’s soul and keeping it safe and maybe helping Zayn to do the same.

Liam reaches out, places a hand on Niall’s shoulder just to remind him that he isn’t alone anymore; that while Harry, whoever he was, had once been everything, Liam was there too.

“I’m going to try again,” Liam says. “And I’ll keep trying until he hears me. Maybe you can too.”

When Niall looks at him his eyes are bright and wet and filled with something Liam thinks to be gratitude although, for what, he isn’t sure. “Maybe…”

+

Things can only stay quiet for so long.

It’s only a matter of time before the voices in your head become your best friends, the only people you can talk to.

This is what Zayn thinks when he finally answers the voice calling out to him.

( _“Zayn, baby, please. Just answer me, please.”_ )

“Liam…”

His voice still doesn’t sound quite right; doesn’t sound like his own even though Zayn knows that it is. It’s raspier than it used to be because it’s been so long since he’s said anything of value. But then nothing feels like him anymore Zayn looks down at his hands and sees the skin and flesh and bone of a man he’s never known. He’s seen hands that have never touched or felt the warmth of a human being, never traced the contours of another human body, never reached in and touched the soul of a boy Zayn had sworn he’d love forever.

And Zayn had let him take the bullet. Zayn had held him,

( _and there was blood –_

_“God, Liam, you’re so fucking stupid.”_

_so much blood._ )

cradled him to his chest and watched him die.

Zayn can hear him crying, but this time he knows he isn’t dreaming

HIs name is ringing in his ears, Liam whispering (“ _Zayn, Zayn, Zayn…”_ ) over and over in his head and it sounds like poetry if Zayn has ever heard it; like music or angels singing and Zayn has to laugh at the irony because this surely isn’t heaven.

But Liam is, and maybe this is Zayn’s tiny piece of it; maybe this is Zayn getting a taste.

“I miss you so much,” Zayn mumbles, his voice gravely and broken. He drags his palms over his face, his hands feeling large and heavy against his skin. “So much. You’re all I can think about and I can never see you and now you’re here and I’m so afraid, Liam. I’m so afraid you’re not real.”

When Liam doesn’t answer right away, Zayn thinks that it’s over. Whatever dream he’s living in, he’s about to wake up and it’ll just be him and that cold, lonely fucking room that makes his chest ache; makes his heart feel like ice and his body go numb like he’ll never feel another thing again.

As sad as he is, Zayn can feel the traces of Liam against his skin, knows the memory of “I love you” whispered hot against his ear as Liam’s body covered his own. It hurts and Zayn knows that part of his life is long over and the only thing he really has to look forward to is vacant white walls and an overactive imagination, but it’s there and Zayn can feel it, for a moment, it’s almost like being human again.

Then there’s Liam’s voice again, strong and sure in Zayn’s mind

( _“I’m here.”_ )

and for the briefest of moments, Zayn doesn’t feel so alone.

+

Louis watches him go, notes the fact that Niall isn’t with him, but feels the pang of anger all the same. He sees the smile on Liam’s face and knows that it had worked. Louis wonders how they could possibly think he wouldn’t know; that he wouldn’t find out.

Louis is God.

Louis is omnipotent.

Louis, essentially, knows all.

And they think he doesn’t know. They think he wouldn’t feel their defiance in his bones.

Louis can’t imagine someone so pure being connected to such filth. On some level they are all his children – those in both heaven and hell and everywhere in between – and he should love them all the same, but love is so fragile and unclear.

You can love something (or someone), Louis thinks, and want to destroy them just as much.

Louis can see where Liam is leaving the orb and he can smell the betrayal on his skin. Louis can see where Zayn is sitting, slumped against the pale white of his one room prison, without even running his fingers over those fine wisps of blue and purple smoke.

Louis watches where Liam is walking down the steps, but he also sees Niall, then Harry and his anger is boiling. He sees Niall with his bright as the golden sun smile that had soon faded into a frown after Harry had asked him to go. Louis remembers the way Niall had stopped dead in his tracks as he cried and how he had sat back and watched without doing so much as offering the handkerchief in his back pocket.

And had that been spiteful? Louis wonders sometimes because he should love Niall more than he hates him. Hate clouds the mind, cheapens the soul. Hate is such a strong emotion, but in order to feel something so strong there must also be love in there somewhere.

But for whom?

Louis remembers Harry climbing down those steps, sees his hand over his chest where his heart had once been beating.

Louis remembers Harry climbing down those steps and thinking something in him had changed since the moment he’d placed his hands over that orb.

Then Louis remembers Harry falling.

Falling.

Falling.

( _“Because I loved him,” he’d said simply, plainly, as if Louis should have already known. “Because I still do.”_ )

And he never came back.

+

It’s Sunday and one of the rare days Liam has off from work.

He sleeps until noon and sits on the roof of his apartment while he drinks his coffee just so he can feel welcome chill of the air on his skin and the warmth of the mug burning his hands.

Liam lounges in front of the television, devours an entire bag of Cheetos and doesn’t feel bad when he leaves the empty bag on the couch when he decides to go out for a walk.

Mostly, Liam feels good and he feels free because he’s usually trapped in suits and running back and forth between the office and the tiny Starbucks around the corner. But this weekend most of the partners are off on business and Liam isn’t required to keep the company phone on standby until everyone gets back Monday afternoon.

Liam smiles softly to himself, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his coat as he kicks his front door shut with his feet. He’s halfway down the steps when he remembers to go back and lock it.

“Damn it,” he mutters under his breath before turning around, fishing his keys from the back pocket of his jeans. When he returns, Liam spots a boy sitting on the bottom of the steps. He hadn’t been there before, Liam is sure, and Liam doesn’t recognize him as one of the tenants. But the way the boy is sitting, shoulders slumped, hands resting heavy in his lap, makes him look so sad and Liam just has to ask.

“Hey…” he says, a little apprehensive. “Are you – are you okay?”

The boy turns around in his seat, his eyes widening when he spots Liam standing behind him. “Oh. I’m – I’m sorry am I not – I’ll go.”

Liam holds out a hand, waves it around a bit as if to tell the boy to stop. “No, no, no. I just… I didn’t recognize you and you were just sitting there and you kind of looked… sad? And I just wanted to know if you were okay.”

He’s surprised, Liam can tell although he isn’t sure why, that anyone would bother with asking. “I… Yeah,” he says. “I’m fine. I was just… sitting, I guess.”

Liam knows just by looking at him that there is so much more. It’s his eyes that tell him. They’re so familiar and Liam can swear he’d seen them before somewhere. There is something about him that draws Liam in and makes him want to know more. It’s this feeling that pushes the words past Liam’s lips before he can stop him, the sadness in this boy’s eyes and the tug Liam feels at his heart.

“Walk with me?” He asks. His smile is sheepish and his voice is nervous and Liam knows his cheeks are burning red.

But even though the boy looks nervous as all hell, he eventually nods his head in response and smiles back. “Yeah,” he says. “Sure. Okay.”

+

Liam has never seen him before, but he figures that you kind of know God when you see him.

“God, uh, um, Louis? Sir?”

Louis can’t help but to laugh at Liam’s nerves; the way he’s shaking on the other side of the door frame. “Liam.”

A few feet away, Niall is seated on Liam’s couch staring at his hands and wishing things were different because he already knows what’s happening. Louis is wearing that look. It’s nothing compared to the one he’d worn the day Harry was cast out, but the power in his eyes is undeniable and somehow Niall just knows.

“What can I –” Liam pauses, draws in a deep breath. ‘Can I help you?”

Louis shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and Liam can’t help but to think how he looks so young. Normal, even. Louis doesn’t look like God, like he rules all of heaven and earth. He doesn’t look like he has all of the power in the universe resting in the palm of his hands, like, if he were to will it, he could blink and the entire world would burst into flames.

Standing in front of him, Liam doesn’t look so powerful. But knowing that one boy’s looks could be so deceiving makes it so much more intimidating.

Louis looks past Liam and spots Niall, feels his blood boil when he turns back to look at the boy in front of him. “The other day,” Louis says. “Where were you?”

Liam thinks back to the orb, the blurry image of Zayn lost on the swirls of smoke and the fear and gratitude in his voice.

“The other day?”

“Wednesday,” Louis clarifies. “Wednesday afternoon.”

Liam swallows. “Out? I was just you know, looking around, I guess. Getting my bearings. Everything is still so new.”

“Oh?” Louis smirks, kicks one foot out so it’s resting on its heel. “If I’m remembering correctly I saw you leaving the town’s center. The Roman building, to be exact.”

Liam’s heart feels like it’s racing despite the fact he hasn’t felt it beating since he’d died. Liam’s skin feels too tight around his bones, like it’s squeezing and making it difficult to breathe. “Oh, I was just –”

And Louis is smirking. Liam never thought God could look so evil.

“Zayn,” Louis says. “That’s his name isn’t it?”

“Y-Yeah.”

“And you spoke with him? Through the orb?”

Liam glances back at Niall who is still staring at his hands. “I… yes.”

“Zayn’s in Hell, Liam,” Louis tells him as though it isn’t obvious; as if they both don’t already know. “And the orb… well, we both know you shouldn’t have been using it. Not for that”

Liam doesn’t hear much of what Louis says afterwards. He only catches words like “filth” and “sin” and “pure”. Liam can feel Niall watching him and when he meets his eyes he can sense the sincere apology in them. It’s Like Niall had known all along, he just didn’t want to say.

“Tomorrow,” Louis says. “You have the rest of tonight, and then you’re cast out tomorrow. Understand?”  

“Cast—cast out?” Liam asks. “As in, like, banished?”

Louis frowns. “Yes. What else is there? You’re tainted. You’ve dealt with Hell and you’ve broken the rules. What else would you expect me to do with a traitor? You might as well have fallen the way Harry had…”

He’s looking at Niall when the name leaves his lips. Liam can feel the tension, thinks, given the opportunity, he could cut it with a knife.

“This is your fault,” Louis tells him, eyes piercing Niall’s skin. “Same as last time.”

Louis doesn’t bother with much else after that. Only offers Liam a curt nod and a second, near silent reminder of “tomorrow” before he’s spinning on his heel and walking away.

+

When an angel falls, you can feel it. It’s almost like being pushed, shoved over the edge and sent plummeting to your death.

It’s so much different than jumping, Harry thinks, because jumping requires free will; something given to man by God himself; a gift. Harry remembers the day he fell like it was yesterday. He sees it nearly every time he closes his eyes and it burns the same way missing Niall burns.

When Liam falls Harry can feel it in his bones, feels it in the scream that tears through Zayn’s lungs and pierces his ears. Harry can feel it and he wonders if Niall felt it too back on earth.

Liam is falling, falling, falling and Harry waits for him to land. He waits to see him standing in front of him lost and scared cold even though he’d been expecting fire.

But he never comes.

Odd, Harry thinks. So very odd because Liam had nowhere to go but down.

Zayn is screaming and

_(Oh.)_

Harry knows when Zayn’s cries are broken like Liam’s crushed bones as they smash against hard pavement.

Back to Earth.

Hell would have been too easy. Hell would have been just as good as heaven, maybe even better depending on how Liam looked at it, but Earth…

That’s just as lonely.

“Louis…” Harry sighs because this isn’t fair; it never was.

Back in his one room prison cell, Harry can still hear Zayn screaming only it isn’t screaming so much as it’s crying; sobbing. Ugly, heaving sobs like he can feel the air being taken from Liam’s lungs and there is guilt. So much guilt and Zayn knows this is because of him.

“God…”

And Harry laughs because it’s been decades since he’s bowed his head and prayed.

All he can think to say is

“Please.”

And

“Forgive me.”

Harry doesn’t think twice when he stands to his feet, strides down the corridor until he’s standing in front of Zayn’s door. He’s standing in front of the sink, eyes rimmed red with tears, checks blotchy. Zayn looks tired as he stares into a mirror that isn’t there.

“Zayn.”

Harry’s the first face Zayn has seen it what feels like centuries but it really hasn’t been more than a few years. He’s shocked, face filled with disbelief as he takes a few tentative steps forward, reaches out to touch his face and recoils when he feels the skin beneath his fingers.

Harry takes his hand, feels Zayn’s fingers tense, before leading him out of the room. He doesn’t bother with explanations. Harry only leads Zayn out to the edge and sends him upward.

“Time to go.”

+

His name is Zayn and he’s an artist of sorts.

“English major, but I like to paint and sometimes I’ll sit down and write the occasional song,” he shrugs his shoulders, ducking his head and avoiding eye contact when Liam chances a glance in his direction.

“Where at?”

“Berkley.”

Liam raises his brows, nods his head in approval. “Smart guy…”

Zayn laughs, but it isn’t joyous. “Doesn’t matter where I go,” he says. “Anyone can get in anywhere if they have the right connections.”

Liam wants to ask what he means, but he can sense the bitterness in Zayn’s voice notices the way his jaw tenses up as he speaks. “True,” he answers. “But there has to be some merit there.”

Zayn huffs out a breath of nervous laughter and runs a hand through his hair. “Enough about me. Tell me about you. What do you do? School? Work?”

“I intern at a law firm,” Liam answers. “It’s not very exciting. My job mostly consists of fetching coffee for a bunch of men in suits and making sure their wives don’t call while they’re fucking their secretaries.”

“Sounds fun,” Zayn replies.

Liam shrugs. “It is what it is. I want to make the right connections, you know? So when I pass the bar I’ll have somewhere to go. Plus the experience is nice. I’m not in the courtroom or anything, but I get to see a lot of the behind the scenes stuff they don’t teach you in school.”

“All the lies and the deception?”

When Liam turns to him and smiles, nudges his shoulder as he chuckles lightly at his words, Zayn feels a pang of sadness in his chest. He looks at Liam and everything feels so easy and familiar, kind of like the boy from his dreams, and Zayn thinks that Liam could possibly be him.

But that’s the thing, Zayn thinks, isn’t it? That good things don’t happen to him; not like this.

“It’s like a soap opera,” Liam says lightly.  “But it’s not all bad.”

When Zayn meets Liam’s eye he feels warmer than he ever has, like it isn’t winter and the chill doesn’t get to him every night. Zayn can almost picture himself crawling into a warm bed each night and feeling Liam’s arms wrapping tight around his middle, lips pressing into the top of his spine as a boy he’s vowed to love forever whispers soft affections into his skin.

Zayn has known this boy all of fifteen minutes and he already feels so much. It scares him because this could quite literally be it. It could be this walk and they’ll go their separate ways and never see each other ever again.

When Zayn doesn’t respond right away Liam stops and studies Zayn’s face with a furrowed brow. “Are you alright?”

Zayn nods and decides on a whim to go with his gut. “Yeah, I just… I was just thinking of how I’d like to see you again after today. And how… how I’d be sad if I never got the chance.”

Liam’s face is pink when he looks at his shoes, kicks at a few pebbles lying on the sidewalk. “Um…”

Zayn freezes and his heart feels like it’s stopping in his chest. “Oh are you – God, you’re straight aren’t you?”

He feels stupid because Liam was probably just being nice and he had looked so pathetic sitting on those steps. Zayn thinks he should have known this was too good to be true because good things don’t happen to him. They only start and when it feels like it could finally be something permanent everything falls apart.

Just like at Berkley.

Just like now.

Only

“No,” Liam says.

“No?”

Liam shakes his head. “No, I was just…” He shrugs his shoulders, his smile sheepish as he rubs at the back of his neck. “I was just thinking the same thing, is all.”

Zayn grins

( _“But it’s not all bad”_ )

And thinks Liam might be right.

+

“You sent him back.”

Harry can’t say he’s surprised to hear Louis’ voice, but he’s shocked when he turns around and sees Louis standing mere feet in front of him.

“Yes,” Harry answers, trying to keep his voice cool, calm, and collected. He swallows heavily and he knows Louis catches the bob in his throat, can see his hands shaking, and Harry knows there’s no point in trying to cover up.

“Why.”

It’s not a question so much as it is a demand for an answer.

“It’s…” Harry remembers falling, seeing Niall’s face and wonders if he had screamed the same way Zayn had. “It wasn’t fair.”

Louis scoffs, rolling his eyes as he takes in his surroundings. It’s been years since he’s seen hell and it’s just as cold an uninviting as ever. He wonders how Harry deals with it sometimes and feels that stab of guilt low in his belly.

( _Not your fault; you were only doing your job.)_

Louis only wishes it were true.

“It’s never fair, Harry,” Louis tells him. “Nothing is ever fair.”

“He loved him,” Harry presses and Louis isn’t sure who Harry is referring to. “They loved each other.”

There’s a part of Louis that wants to laugh because if that were all that mattered life would be so easy. “Love,” he says, his voice bitter. “If love were all that mattered you’d still be in Heaven instead of rotting away in this hell hole.”

Harry can’t help but to laugh at the irony of the statement and he subconsciously wonders if it had really taken him this long to become so bitter. “And whose fault is that?”

“I didn’t have a choice!” Louis snaps. Harry recoils at the outburst. “I didn’t have a choice, so don’t put that on me. You let him do this to you; you did this to yourself.”

“But you did,” Harry says softly. “I left to be with Niall, just for a little while and you brought me back. You brought me back and cast me out as soon as you got the order.”

“What was I supposed to do?” Louis counters, his voice growing louder out of desperation and anger.

“Whatever you wanted!”

Harry knows this is more than just Zayn and Liam and some stupid orb. He knows this is far beyond technicalities and Harry knows that Niall is up there and that Louis is bitter that’s all there is to it.

“You’re God,” Harry says, his voice quiet. “You make the rules and you decide what’s just. Not some rule book or those guys who bitch and moan about technicalities. You.”

“You fell, Harry,” Louis responds. “You were my best friend and I loved you and you fell.”

“You pushed me.”

Louis shakes his head, wipes at the tears threatening to slip down his cheeks. “It’s not fair…”

This time it’s Harry who scoffs, running a hand through his hair before turning on his heel. Starting down the hall to his one room prison cell.

“Isn’t it?”

+

Liam knows Zayn is troubled. He sees it in the way Zayn looks at him as though he isn’t real sometimes, like Zayn can’t believe that someone like Liam would want anything to do with him. Liam also notices the way Zayn always brushes him off whenever Liam invites him out with friends or tries to get him out for lunch or dinner. Liam knows Zayn is troubled based solely on the way he avoids any and all conversation about his past or his future or anything concerning himself.

Liam can see that Zayn is trying though, that he wants to let Liam in and share every bit of himself in the same way Liam is slowly, but surely, allowing little pieces of himself to be revealed as they spend more and more time together. Liam can see that Zayn is just scared and falling back onto old habits of shutting the world out because Liam knows, he looks into Zayn’s eyes and he knows, the world can be so cruel.

Sometimes, Liam starts small.

“How are classes?”

It’s one of those days that are just like all the others where Zayn is sitting in the giant armchair Liam’s grandparents had gotten for him, nursing a hot cup of coffee and flipping through a magazine he’d found on Liam’s coffee table while Liam goes over a few files from work, checking for typos or other technical errors so the big guys in suits don’t have to.

It’s easy and simple and Liam can’t help but to love how Zayn sort of just fits.

“Classes?” Zayn asks, looking up from the article he’d been reading.

“Yeah,” Liam says. “At school?”

He feels as though he sounds like a parent trying to get the details on his son’s school life; wanting to know how his grades are, if he likes his teachers and if his teachers like him.

Zayn shrugs, trains his eyes back onto a photo of an actor he knows nothing about, but is pretty sure he’s seen on television a few times. “It’s whatever, I guess. Nothing new, really.”

“You never even told me what you were taking this semester.”

Liam doesn’t want to pry, but he also wants to know. It’s been two months and he knows close to nothing about Zayn aside from the fact that he feels so close to him. That’s the main thing keeping him around, really, this itching, gnawing feeling that Zayn is so much more than some boy Liam met on the bottom of the steps.

Liam watches Zayn swallow the lump in his throat, sees the nervous twitch of his eyebrow. “I… I don’t think it really matters.”

Liam clicks the save button on his computer screen and shuts his laptop. “But it does,” Liam tells him. “It’s a part of you. We talk about me all the time, but you never tell me anything about yourself.”

“Because,” Zayn says slowly, his voice growing defensive. “It doesn’t matter.”

Liam sighs because this is how it always goes.

Nowhere.

Liam never gets anywhere because no matter how hard he tries, Zayn won’t seem to let him in. He can tell that he wants to, that it’s probably just fear, but Liam can’t seem to get Zayn to see that Liam doesn’t care. Whatever it is that he’s afraid of Liam finding out, Liam doesn’t think he would care.

It’s like they’re a couple, but they’re not because Liam has only kissed Zayn once when it was raining and they were standing outside of his apartment and Zayn’s hair was lying flat against his forehead, his eyes looking golden and glossy and his face dripping as he licked rainwater from his lips. It was nice and soft and pretty much everything Liam had imagined it to be until Zayn pulled away and stumbled over an excuse of needing to get home so he could feed his cat.

Liam hadn’t even known Zayn owned a cat. He never mentioned it.

They never talked about it either. The next time Liam saw Zayn, his face had gone red as soon as he’d laid eyes on Liam and Liam didn’t want to make things any more awkward than they had to be.

It’s just that, for some reason, Zayn means so much and Liam only wants to help. He wants pick up all the broken pieces and fit them back together again; make Zayn whole because sometimes he looks so empty.

“I’m sorry,” Zayn says, snapping Liam from his thoughts.

Liam can feel the frown heavy on his lips and tries to school his expression into something neutral. “It’s okay.”

The magazine is closed now, as Zayn leans forward to place it back onto the coffee table. He pushes himself up from where he’d been sitting in the armchair and crosses the room to take the empty space next to Liam.

Liam can almost feel how hard Zayn’s heart is beating in his chest and he knows this is Zayn trying and it can’t be easy. “It’s not you,” Zayn says. “It’s me. There are some things… My life is complicated right now. Everything is messed up and then you came along and the timing couldn’t have been worse, but… I’m trying.”

It sounds like one of those stupid excuses people give when they break up with someone, but Zayn and Liam aren’t even dating. Liam hasn’t even gotten all the way to first base if he’s being completely honest with himself. But he can see the sincerity in Zayn’s eyes and that he’s struggling and all Liam wants to do is fix things; make it better.

“Let me help you.”

Zayn shakes his head, tries to smile as he places a hand on Liam’s knee. His eyes shift down briefly to Liam’s lips and when he leans inward Liam is almost certain that Zayn is going to kiss him. But he only feels the light pressure of Zayn’s slightly chapped lips against his cheek.

“I’m okay.”

And for now, Liam thinks, that can be enough.

+

“They’re going to find each other,” Niall says quietly, hands covering the orb as he stares down at Harry. He felt it when Harry had reached out to him, had jarred Niall from sleep and dragged him out to the orb.

Harry nods, head thumping back against the white of his wall. “Yeah.”

“It’s fate,” Niall tells him. “That should mean something, shouldn’t it?”

Harry shrugged his shoulders. “I thought… we were fate too weren’t we?”

Niall smiles sadly, fingers tapping against the glass as he wills himself not to cry. Sometimes he wishes it were different. That he’d never met Harry those few days before he died. He wishes they’d never spent the night together and that his free spirit had never captured Harry’s heart. Niall wishes that Harry’s smile hadn’t brightened his day the last time he’d seen it

(and it’s been so long)

Because if none of that had been so Harry would still be up here instead of down there and things would be so different.

“Niall?”

“Yeah,” Niall answers, his voice broken. He sniffs and wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “I think we were.”

Down below, Harry hugs his knees to his chest and sighs. “They’re going to find each other and they’re going to fall in love and they’re going to be happy, aren’t they? Even if they don’t remember who they were before.”

“Because that’s fate.”

Harry looks up and smiles for the first time in what Niall thinks might be years, decades even. “Like us?”

Niall’s laugh is wet with tears, but these ones are happier and void of the regret and uncertainty he’d been feeling before because Niall had found Harry just before he died and those view days were the best in his life and even with all the sadness and sorrow surrounding them and the distance put between them Niall still feels connected to him; Niall still loves him just as much.

“Yeah,” Niall chokes out, gripping the orb a little tighter as if it will bring him closer to Harry. “Only I never forgot you.”

“No.” Harry shakes his head and even though he can’t see him, he knows Niall is smiling. “You didn’t.”

They don’t speak any more after that. Niall simply stands over the orb, hands pressed tight against the glass as he watches Harry. There’s a familiar tightness in his chest that only ever comes when he’s overwhelmed with the urge to curl into the boy lost in the swirling mass of blues and purples for the rest of time, but for now he’s content to just watch and know that, at least for now, Harry is happy.

+

Zayn hates the way the ringing sounds on the other end of the line, hates that he still has a phone because his parents are paying for it.

Mostly Zayn just hates lying.

“Yeah?”

Zayn sighs because he knows his dad never checks the caller ID.

“It’s me.”

“Zayn! Haven’t heard from you in weeks,” his dad says.

And he sounds so proud. So fucking proud and Zayn knows he’ll never be able to tell him.

But this isn’t about confessing or speaking the truth. It’s just that Zayn only has about twenty dollars left and he hasn’t found a job and a guy needs to eat.

And Liam.

There’s also Liam.

“Yeah, um… sorry about that,” Zayn apologizes. “I’ve been busy.”

“Don’t we know. How’s it going up there? Classes okay?”

Zayn sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, um, great. You know, the usual.”

“Good, good.”

“Listen, uh, Dad, I hate calling you like this but I um… I was wondering if you and mom would be able to help me out a bit…”

The words taste sour leaving his mouth, like they never should have been there in the first place. Zayn could hear the pride in his dad’s voice only a few seconds earlier and Zayn hates knowing that it’s fake. The feeling may be genuine, but the reasoning behind it?

Lies, Zayn thinks. It’s all lies.

“Everything okay up there?” His dad asks.

“Yeah, yeah, no,” Zayn answers. “No emergency or anything I just, uh… you know, work has been slow and I haven’t been getting any hours really…”

Zayn can see his dad on the other end now. He’s probably sitting in his armchair with the paper, flipping through the sports section or the current events while he listens to his mother sing along with the radio in the kitchen while she washes the dishes from dinner.

It’s all probably so nice and normal and they probably talk about him at the table over chicken and rice; about how proud they are of their boy off at Berkley learning all about dead writers and poets, meeting friends and possibly even falling in love.

Zayn wants to laugh because he’s not doing any of that.

Not even before, really.

Sure he was learning about dead writers and poets and, yeah, he was meeting people.

But there was drugs and booze and a whole bunch of surrealist art that got painted onto walls instead of canvas. There were late nights filled with unprotected sex and maybe a little academic dishonesty.

Then there was that final semester when Zayn really needed that C in Gothic Literature and the fifteen page term paper that was never going to get written on time.

And his professor was kind of pretty. She was forty-seven, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t pretty.

But, God, Zayn thinks, Goddammit, the TA was not supposed to walk in.

“How much do you need?”

“Nothing specific,” Zayn says quickly. “I know you and mom weren’t—”

“How much, Zayn?”

“Anything, Dad,” the desperation in his voice is nothing short of embarrassing and Zayn just wants to end the call. “Whatever you and mom can do is fine.”

His father sighs. “You always were a good kid, you know,” he says. The fact that Zayn knows he’s smiling makes him cringe. “We’ll put a couple hundred in your account in the morning, okay?”

Zayn nods, feels his chest seize with guilt and he really needs to get off the phone. “Thanks, dad,” he chokes out and coughs to mask the uneven tone of his voice.

“You’re welcome, son. You’ve come so far and, your mom and I, we’re so proud of you. You deserve it.”

( _“No. No, I don’t because I’m a fake and a fraud. I’m a liar and I’m a cheat and I’m a coward. I’m nothing and I’m so fucking scared”_ )

Zayn only laughs and it sounds bitter and removed. “Sure…”

Luckily, his father doesn’t notice. Zayn hears the shuffling of the newspaper and then his father is saying something about his age getting to him and needing to get to bed. “Got an early day at work tomorrow. Your mother put that money in your account though, okay? Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks, again, Dad.”

“And Zayn?”

“Hm?”

“We really are proud of you.”

“Thanks,” Zayn says, his voice thick and heavy on his tongue and, more than anything, he just wishes he’d given his dad a reason.

+

“You’re really beautiful,” Liam says as they stumble out of the bar they’d been hanging out in for the past three and half hours. Everything is fuzzy around the edges and if he focuses on one spot for too long everything starts spinning. It’s nice though and Zayn looks so much closer and so much more vivid like this Liam doesn’t think he’d want to view the world another way.

Zayn laughs, swings an arm over Liam’s shoulders. “No,” he answers. “But thanks for thinking so.”

“No, no, no, but you are,” Liam presses, his head falling against Zayn’s as they lopsidedly navigate the sidewalk, clumsily sidestepping the odd passerby. “You’re like a… like an _angel_.”

Zayn glances down at Liam and the sincerity in his eyes makes his heart ache because this is Liam being honest. Zayn feels so much farther away from the comparison though, feels like he’s been tip toeing the line closer to hell than to heave, living in this tiny box-like prison with blank walls decorated with everything he’s ever done wrong with the past.

And all he can do is sit back and stare at it, drink it all in and allow it to eat him whole.

“Sometimes,” Liam continues on as they stumble back toward his apartment where Zayn will drop him off before walking the rest of his buzz off and then maybe find a bench somewhere in the park to pass out on if he doesn’t feel like walking some more. “Sometimes I think you could be an angel. Like maybe you got lost on the way to heaven or something…”

“What?” Zayn chuckles, letting his arm slide off of Liam’s shoulders so he can lace their fingers together.  Liam looks down at their hands and smiles as he gives Zayn’s a gentle squeeze.

It’s almost like he’s sober again, but then he starts talking.

“I think you got lost on your way to heaven. And now you’re stuck here and I’m supposed to help you.”

“Help me…”

Liam nods. “You look so lost sometimes… and it’s sad. You’re so sad, Zayn, and I just wanna…” Liam stops walking, lets go of Zayn’s hand as he combs his fingers through his hair. “I wanna help you.”

They stand a few feet apart, just looking at one another, neither of them speaking. They’re a few blocks from Liam’s apartment and Zayn’s body is humming. He can still feel the liquor although he’s not nearly as drunk as Liam who is looking at him with this dazed, helpless and pleading expression.            

“What happened to you to make you so sad?” Liam asks, closing the distance between them and placing a hand on Zayn’s cheek.

Zayn leans into the touch, loses himself in the warmth of Liam’s open palm and he thinks it’s one of the few times when he doesn’t feel so cold. It’s one of the few times he feels as though he were somewhere he belongs.

“I… I don’t know,” Zayn answers and for the first time he’s feeling completely honest. Zayn doesn’t know when things went south or why he spent so much time fucking around and pretending as though nothing really mattered. He just knows that things were easier when he wasn’t paying attention; when he wasn’t focused on making people proud of him. Zayn just knows it was easier when he wasn’t trying, but the only place that got him was covered in sweat and fucking into his lit professor just before her TA barged into her office.

Liam drops his hand from Zayn’s face and offers him a sad smile before lacing their fingers together and leading Zayn the rest of the way back to his apartment. Standing in front of the steps, Zayn remembers the first time they’d met and the way Liam had been so concerned about a complete stranger. He looks at Liam and now and is overwhelmed with how inherently good he is and Zayn thinks

“You’re the angel…”

Liam doesn’t much in response, just ducks his head as his cheeks flush pink before nodding up the stairs. “Walk me up?”

It’s more than just a question of climbing stairs and making sure Liam makes it safely inside. It’s Liam asking Zayn to stay, to let him in instead of crawling back into himself and walking away.

And Zayn thinks that he wants to because hiding out and pretending like things aren’t steadily falling to pieces hasn’t been working. Not trying and spending his time working to keep pretty much everyone and everything at bay hasn’t been working.

The only good thing, despite the fact that Zayn has been working to push him away too, he really has is Liam and Zayn doesn’t particularly want to lose that.

So he nods, swallows the nervous lump in his throat and says “Okay.”

Zayn isn’t sure when it happens, but somewhere between walking Liam up the stairs to his apartment and Liam leading Zayn inside he feels lips pressing gently, almost hesitantly against his own. It isn’t like the last time when there had been rain water in his eyes and the world had gone all blurry around the edges and everything suddenly felt like too much.

This is different because Liam’s lips are a little chapped and he tastes like vodka and orange juice and those nuts they leave out on the bar. Zayn can feel the steady exhale through Liam’s nose, fingers tentatively ghosting over the exposed skin between the hem of Zayn’s shirt and the waistband of his jeans. Zayn is taking the time to notice all of these things and more (like the way Zayn can feel Liam’s heart fighting it’s way out of his chest from beneath the palm of his hand) and it’s so different from before.

“I…” Zayn’s voice is breathless when he speaks, his eyes half lidded as he takes a moment to ground himself. Kissing Liam was something Zayn would attribute to being lifted, like he was being brought closer to some higher being he’d never really taken the time to consider.

“Don’t,” Liam tells him, pressing their foreheads together. He isn’t sure if it’s the alcohol or just time finally catching up with them, but he feels so much closer to Zayn now than he ever has before and he doesn’t want the feeling to go away before he has the chance to enjoy it. “Don’t say anything; not yet.”

Zayn nods, his nose brushing against Liam as he concedes. “Okay.”

“Just… just be with me.”

And Zayn nods again, his fingers gripping tight to Liam’s shirt because he’s scared. Zayn isn’t sure how to navigate the situation. Prior to Liam sex had always been sex. Nothing more and nothing less. It was Zayn using another body and allowing another body to use him.

As his father, the economist, would say, it was a mutual exchange of goods.

But Liam was different. A mere touch of Liam’s fingertips to his skin felt like so much more than allowing another person to delve into the deepest parts of Zayn’s body.

“Zayn?” Liam holds him at arm’s length, eyes filled with concern. “You okay?”

Zayn nods, buries his face into Liam’s neck and kisses the skin just beneath his jaw. “Yeah.”

“Stay with me,” Liam tells him, wrapping his arms around Zayn’s waist. “Don’t go.”

Zayn nods again “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

There’s something about being with Liam that makes Zayn feel safe. It’s like Liam is the answer he’s needed his entire life. Missing Liam was the one thing that kept everything from making sense.

Allowing Liam to lie him out on the bed, letting him slip his shirt over his shoulders and slide his jeans down his legs, Zayn doesn’t feel exposed so much as he feels as though he’s letting Liam in without having to say a word.

Liam’s lips on his skin, his teeth nipping at his inner thighs as his hands slide up and down Zayn’s sides feel like heaven. Zayn’s body feels as though it were on fire, like he’s finally feeling the warmth he’d been lacking after a life of feeling cold and empty.

Liam is the high Zayn had always been chasing.

The affection he’d always tried to steal from strangers at parties.

He’s everything Zayn had never really known he’d been missing, but had been aching to find.

+

“They found each other,” Niall says quietly, hands on the orb as he stares down at Zayn and Liam. He can feel where Louis is standing behind him.

“I know,” Louis answers, closing the distance between them and taking the space next to Niall so he can see into the glass as well.

They’re in Liam’s living room, Zayn clinging to Liam as if he’s about to float away and Liam begging him to stay.

“I knew they would.” Niall smiles upon seeing Liam take Zayn’s hand, kissing his knuckles before leading him down the hall toward his bedroom. It’s almost invasive, he thinks, to see them like this: so open and vulnerable and they don’t even know. But it’s not sex Niall thinks he’s about to witness, so much as it’s two bodies finding each other after what must have felt like an eternity of being kept apart; being held at arms distance from one another. “It’s fate.”

Louis scoffs. “Fate…” he repeats. “Like you and Harry? That was fate too wasn’t it?”

Niall shakes his head, looks down into the orb. He sees the way Liam practically worships Zayn’s body and the way Zayn has this tendency to relax into the touch and the feel of the moment before tensing up like he’s afraid of slipping in too far. He watches the way Liam eases Zayn back in, keeping him grounded and safe.

“Yeah but… Harry and I were different.”

“Yeah,” Louis tells him. “Because Harry was never supposed to fall.”

“That’s not my fault. I never asked him –”

“You never had to. You made him love you so much that he gave up everything just so he could go back.”

“How is that…?”

Niall trails off when he catches Louis staring into the orb. It should feel dirty, watching two people move so fluidly together. Niall should feel wrong watching the way Zayn’s legs curl around Liam’s waist, his fingers digging into the skin of Liam’s shoulder blades. He can almost feel the warmth of Liam’s breath skirting over Zayn’s neck, Zayn’s harsh pants into Liam’s ear as he kisses the side of his face and says something about feeling closer to God even though he’d never really believed.

“He was my friend,” Louis says, his voice low and bitter and quiet. “He was the only person I had up here. I loved him like a brother and he—” Louis stops, his voice breaking as his eyes swell with tears. It’s the first time Niall has ever thought he looked human. “He was supposed to be here. Harry was supposed to be God, but he gave all that up so he could go back to you.”

“I never—”

“Of course you didn’t, Niall,” Louis says, rolling his eyes. He drags hand over his face. “No one ever means to, but you did. Harry was my friend and I loved him and he fell to be with a boy he’d known for all of three days. Three fucking days, Niall. Time, as you know, goes by so much quicker here. Harry and I were… years, Niall. And I loved him and he left to be with you and I…

I brought him back and not soon after they made me God and you know what I had to do? I had to cast him out; my friend and my brother and he looked at me and he begged me, Niall, he begged me not to but there are rules and everyone was watching and I had to.

And now he hates me. Harry hates me and he loves you and he’s there and you’re here and he still loves you. And them?” Louis gestures toward the orb where Zayn and Liam are lying in a heap of limbs and sheets and blankets. “They love each other and they don’t even know.”

There’s a pause where Louis waits for Niall to answer him, but Niall doesn’t have the words because he’d never really known.

“All of this,” Louis tells him. “They good and the bad and the beautiful and the ugly… it’s because of you. Harry fell in love and fell in love with you. He left heaven because of you. He was cast out of heaven because of you. Zayn and Liam? They’re back on earth because of you; because you showed Liam the orb. And Harry hates me because he loves you too much.”

Niall wants to hate Louis just as much as he Louis thinks Harry hates him, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Mostly, Louis just makes him sad. He’s so bitter and alone and lost and

“He doesn’t hate you,” Niall says softly. “He’s disappointed.”

Louis scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Disappointed…”

“Because you didn’t understand. It wasn’t that he didn’t care or love you enough to stay. He just…” Niall ducks his head to hide the blood rushing to his cheeks. “Harry found something he loved enough to risk leaving.”

+

 “Tell me what happened,” Liam says softly, kissing Zayn’s shoulder.

Zayn freezes, tries to mask the sudden tension in his body by stretching. “I…” He turns his head to the side to find Liam eyeing him, sleepily interesting in Zayn’s answer. He’s pretty, Zayn thinks, all sated and happy and looking at Zayn like he’s the most important thing in the world.

Zayn looks into Liam’s eyes and finds something he wants to call love, but passes it off as post coital admiration because Liam is looking at him like

“The boy from my paintings,” he says. “The one I always wanted to meet.”

“What?”

Liam is quite literally the boy of his dreams; someone truly extraordinary and Zayn is scum. He’s dirty and crooked and all he ever seems to do is disappoint and he doesn’t want to do that to Liam. No matter what Liam says, that he won’t care, that all he wants to do is help, Zayn doesn’t want to risk the disappointment. He doesn’t want to tell Liam everything only to meet the disheartened expression in his eyes.

“I have to go home,” Zayn mutters, throwing the blanket Liam had wrapped them both in over his legs.

“What? No. Stay.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” Liam’s asks, voice sounding frustrated and slightly wounded.

“I just—I have things I need to do.”

“When I asked you to stay earlier I didn’t mean for you to come here, fuck me, and leave, Zayn. I meant for you to s _tay_ ; to be here with me. At least for the night, but hopefully, you know, longer.”

“I…” Zayn sighs from where he’s sitting at the edge of the bed. He feels so exposed, not just physically but in every way possible. He feels as though Liam can really see him now; see how scared he is. Like Liam can look at him and read every thought running through his mind.

“I know,” Zayn tells him. “I know that’s what you meant and I – I want to, but I just… I just can’t okay?” 

There’s a moment where Liam starts to speak. He opens his mouth before clamping it shut again and narrowing his eyes as he takes in Zayn’s guilty expression. And then he’s sitting up in bed Liam is wearing this determined expression, bordering on angry, that Zayn has never seen before.

“You’re not sleeping on a bench tonight.”

Liam’s voice is still a little spent and sleepy, but Zayn can tell that he means it by the look in his eyes alone. He doesn’t understand how Liam could possibly even know about that because he’s never said a word. Zayn has never shared anything beyond the basics of his life since they met.

“How…”

“You have three shirts,” Liam tells him. “And I’ve followed you after you left my apartment. You go to the park. You like the bench near the duck pond. You keep your things in the backseat of a car parked in the visitor’s lot in the apartment complex down the street.”

“You had no right.”

“Well what do you expect me to do, Zayn?” Liam’s eyes go slightly wide as if to ask Zayn if he’s seriously questioning this. “I’ve known you for almost four months and you’ve barely told me your favorite color. You come over here all the time, but you never mention inviting me to a place of your own. You don’t talk about your family or school – which I know you’re not attending, by the way – and you just… you’re so closed off, Zayn. At first I thought you were just shy, but… it’s like you’re ashamed and I – I get it. Everyone has problems, some obviously worse than others, but that’s not an excuse to push people away.”

His expression is pure and genuine and Zayn knows that if he were to lay it all out right now Liam would probably do the right thing and tell Zayn that it’s okay. He would say all the right things and Liam would hold him and promise him that everything would be alright and it probably would be. Liam would help him, Zayn knows.

But he’d also probably look at Zayn a little bit differently, like Zayn could have done so much better. Like he knows Zayn _is_ so much better and how could such potential go to waste.

And that’s what Zayn doesn’t want.

He doesn’t want to lose that look he’d been so afraid to attribute to love. Not now.

“I have to go,” Zayn says quietly, like he knows he’s disappointing Liam, but it’s something he has to do. He needs to nip things in the bud now before they get out of hand the way they had before.

Zayn can’t do relationships, no matter how badly he wants to, with the way things are now and, as much as he cares about Liam, Zayn doesn’t want to drag him into the mess his life has become. It isn’t fair and Liam is so good and Zayn wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he were to ruin him.

“Zayn…”

He doesn’t answer him. Zayn just pushes himself off the bed and snatches his underwear from where Liam had tossed them to the floor and slides them on. He ignores the hurt expression on Liam’s face as his eyes follow Zayn’s movements while he navigates the bedroom for the rest of his clothes.

It stings, the disappointment in Liam’s eyes and it’s almost just as bad as what Zayn knows would be there if he’d spoken the truth. It’s better this way, cutting things off before they ever have a chance to start. Zayn knows Liam cares, probably cares more than he really should, but he also knows that Liam pities him, wants to help him and save him because he thinks Zayn can’t do so for himself.

And that’s probably true. It’s been proven time and time again. Whenever Zayn is given the chance to do something right he passes it up, throws it all away with a joint or a bottle of booze. He gets lost in parties and forgets all about his responsibilities because at least when you set yourself up for failure you know exactly what to expect.

There’s no surprise when you slip and fall; no pain when you hit the ground.

“Zayn.” Liam’s voice is more insistent now, like he’s begging.

Zayn stops by the door to Liam’s bedroom before he goes, keeps his hand on the frame as he looks back at Liam sitting up in a bed that’s too big for him, wrapped up in a blanket staring back at Zayn with big, wet brown eyes. Liam just looks so sad Zayn can’t help but to think he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

 “You’re so good, Liam,” Zayn says, his voice broken and he almost regrets it even though it’s right. He knows it’s right.

“And so are you,” Liam answers earnestly. “You’re good, too.”

“No,” Zayn replies, shaking his head. “I’m not. Not yet.”

The thing is, Zayn wants to be. He wants to for Liam, everything Liam has been trying to be for him because Liam deserves it just as much (if not more) as Zayn does.

And Zayn just can’t do that, not now at least.

He forces himself away from Liam’s bedroom and out the front door before Liam has a chance to say anything else. 

+

The second time Louis visits Harry in Hell isn’t as bitter as the first.

“They found each other,” Louis tells him, wrapping his arms around himself.

Harry doesn’t look at him. “Yeah. Niall told me.”

“But… Zayn left.”

Harry grunts, tries to act as though he doesn’t care but Louis can tell, can see it in the way Harry holds himself that he does. “Mmhm. Niall told me that, too.” Then Harry turns, meets Louis’ gaze and shrugs his shoulders. It’s like he’s giving up even though he still has so much hope left in him. It’s like Harry doesn’t even see the point. “Looks like you got what you wanted, yeah?”

“I didn’t want…” Louis sighs. He doesn’t have the words. He doesn’t know how to tell Harry that he’s sorry and that he’s fucked up and angry and bitter and so very sorry.

“You can’t do that, Louis,” Harry tells him. “You can’t keep doing that because it isn’t… it’s not fair. You can’t cast people out of heaven to keep them away from people and then come down here and feel sad about it. You can’t be my friend one day and then send me to the depths of hell and expect things to be the way they were.”

“You left,” Louis says.

Harry scoffs. “Like I wasn’t going to come back? We were best friends, Louis. Did you really think I was just going to leave and not come back?”

And there it was. The disappointment Niall had been talking about before. Louis can see it in Harry’s eyes; the hurt and the betrayal and Louis knows that it’s his doing, not Niall’s.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Louis says, his voice small and defeated. “They made me God and I… what was I supposed to do? I had no other choice.”

“But you did. You had a choice with me the same way you had with Liam.”

"To do what, Harry? You _left._ Even if you were going to come back, you still left and I – I was so angry at you. You were my best friend and it felt like you had just tossed me aside for some guy you‘d known all of three days of your entire life. I didn’t know you were coming back and I was so angry and... there were rules Harry. I didn’t have a choice.”

“You should have known I wouldn’t have done that. I loved you like a brother, Louis. You had to have known.”

“What would you have thought?”

“I never thought you’d cast me out.”

“Well,” Louis says, shrugging his shoulders. “You shouldn’t have put me in that position.”

It’s the first time they’re really being honest. Harry sees the hurt in Louis’ eyes and knows that casting him out of heaven and into Hell couldn’t have been easy. He knows that, while it’s not the same, Louis has felt alone all these years the same as Harry has.

“I know,” Harry says softly. “It was selfish and I… I’m sorry, okay?”

Louis nods. “Me too.”

Nothing is fixed. Harry is still in Hell and Louis is still in Heaven and Niall is still so far away, but it’s a start. The disappointment is fading from Harry’s eyes and is replaced with something Louis likes to think of as understanding which, while it isn’t acceptance, is better than nothing at all.

Louis is just about to leave when he turns back around to face Harry. “They’re gonna be okay,” he says.

Harry furrows his brow, surprised Louis is even still there. “Huh?”

“Zayn and Liam. They’ll be okay.”

“But Zayn left…” Harry reminds him. “He walked out.”

Louis nods, starts walking back towards the door to Harry’s room. “And He’ll go back,” he says. “The same way you did.”

+

It takes him six months, but he does it.

He finds a job at a sandwich shop bussing tables and taking orders at the register. He saves up his money and rents out a studio apartment, buys furniture from a secondhand shop downtown and makes the place his home. Zayn calls his parents and tells them everything (he leaves out the part about fucking his professor, but he figures that isn’t so bad) and, while they’re sorely disappointed and worried about his future, Zayn feels good about being honest; like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders.

He starts hanging out with his co-workers, goes to dinner and movies and small get togethers at their apartments. He doesn’t rely on weed and booze and random bodies to make himself happy. Zayn starts to let people in.

And he paints. He paints pictures of a boy with bright brown eyes and he writes poems about nimble fingers that had reached out and touched his soul.

Only this time Zayn knows him and he misses him and while he’s found a million other reasons to smile, he’s only ever really needed one.

+

When Liam sees the boy sitting at the bottom of the steps it isn’t like the first time. He doesn’t feel nervous or scared or worried. Mostly, Liam just feels angry.

“What are you doing here?”

Zayn stands up, turns around and offers Liam an anxious smile. He’s bouncing on his heels and playing with his fingers like he can’t keep still and Liam would be lying if he said he didn’t find it in the least bit endearing.

“I…” Zayn glances down, bends over and picks up the foil wrapped sandwich that had been sitting on the steps beside him. “I brought you this.”

“A sandwich?” Liam asks curiously.

“A peace offering.”

Zayn’s smile is hopeful and sweet and his eyes look so much brighter than they ever had. He looks brighter and Liam isn’t exactly when or how that happened. He looks down at the sandwich in his hands and Liam laughs because it’s kind of stupid and thoughtful in a way that, when he thinks about it, has to be exactly Zayn. It’s one of the many parts of himself that he’d kept holed up inside and now, here he was, letting Liam see it.

“It better be good.”

Zayn shrugs. “It should be,” he says. “I made it myself and, I’m not trying to brag, but I get all the tips.”

Liam scoffs. “That’s probably because you’re pretty.”

It’s amazing how easy this is, talking to Zayn and seeing him. It feels natural, like nothing had ever happened or changed between them. It’s as if they’d known each other for years. But then Liam remembers that very last time and how Zayn had left him alone and the tension comes back and forgetting isn’t so easy.

“Zayn…” He says slowly.

Zayn nods. “I know I… that’s actually why I came. Not just for the sandwich, but because I wanted to talk to you; to apologize.”

“Zayn—”

“Liam just…” He stops himself, runs a hand through his hair. “You were so good for me, you know? Everything about you was good for me. You’re smart and you’re funny and you’re nice to people and you care and you wanted to help me so bad. You looked at me and, right away, you could tell I was broken or that I was just… I wasn’t right. You knew before I even really did and it was like… It was like you knew me better than I knew myself. And that scared me. How good you were for me scared me so much.”

“Why… Why didn’t you just tell me? I could have…”

“Helped me?” Zayn asks with a knowing smile and Liam blushes, ducks his head and shrugs.

“Maybe… I don’t know.”

Zayn swallows, looks down and scuffs his shoe against the pavement. “I fucked my professor,” he says. “That’s why I dropped out of school. I’d… I was messing around; drinking, getting high, going to parties and hooking up… all that stuff and I got behind and there was this paper due and I knew it wasn’t going to get done and my grades were shit as it was so I fucked my teacher for an A. Her TA walked in and caught us and I dropped out in order to avoid expulsion.

My dad had pulled some strings to get me into Berkley and my parents thought I was doing so well, like I was finally getting my act together, and they were so proud I just… I couldn’t tell them. So I stayed here. My landlord had to kick me out of my apartment, but he let me keep my car parked in the visitor’s lot. I slept at the park most of the time because the tenants didn’t like seeing me passed out in my car every night.

And then I met you and I… I don’t know. Things changed. You were so good to me even though you didn’t have to be and you wanted to help and I didn’t know how to handle that. I didn’t know how to tell you and not… you deserved better than what I was, Liam.”

“And that’s why you left?” Liam asks, toying with the foil wrapped around the sandwich Zayn had made him. “Because you thought I deserved better?”

Zayn nods. “I saw the way you looked at me. You looked at me like I was so much and I – I wanted to be as good for you as you were for me. You made me want to be better.”

 It’s quiet for a moment and Zayn is almost sure that he’d made a mistake. Coming here and putting it all out there like this was a mistake and Liam wasn’t about to just forget everything and take him back as though nothing had ever happened.

But then Liam is smiling and offering Zayn the hand that isn’t around his sandwich and nodding in a direction somewhere away from his apartment building.

“Walk with me?” He asks, and it’s like the first time only a little different because this isn’t Liam trying to save Zayn. Not anymore. It’s just a natural desire to be together and to know each other and to be happy.

“Yeah,” Zayn says, lacing their fingers together and returning the smile. “Okay.”


End file.
